ANZAC Biscuits

Today Australians and New Zealanders are celebrating ANZAC Day. For those of you who don’t know what ANZAC Day is, I have done a write up with the history and explanation here so please check that out.

This post is all about the ANZAC Biscuits. Every year around ANZAC families make these biscuits and its not hard to understand why. They are delicious. ANZAC biscuits are a crunchy, chewy biscuit, with a soft interior and a strong caramel like flavour with hints of coconut. They are biscuit that is perfect for anyone, anytime of the year not just ANZAC Day.

These biscuits seem easy to make on the surface but a lot of things can go wrong. If the mixture is too runny they will end up like flat, crisp pancakes. If the mixture is to thick they don’t spread and end up like rocks.

The key is to follow the recipe and ensure you do each step as written and not to over cook these biscuits. They will be golden brown but soft when cooked. They harden dramatically when cooled so don’t over cook them!

These biscuits don’t use eggs. They rely on the reaction between the baking soda and boiling water to create the lighter, fluffier texture. If you don’t get the fizzing reaction between the baking soda and water, guess what? You’ll end up with flat, rock-like pancakes.

The reaction is one of the fun parts about making these biscuits. Call me childish, but I get super excited when it happens. (Small things amuse small minds…)

I have already posted a recipe/experiment for ANZAC Biscuits here, but the photos are not to be desired and they were one of the recipes from my old blog so I thought a revamp was desperately needed. The experiment I preformed in the old post is still relevant and fun so if you want to give that a go make sure you let me know how it goes.

Making these ANZAC Biscuits just reiterated why I love my recipe as I use brown sugar in place of regular sugar to not only create a deeper, richer caramel like flavour but also to create more moisture in these biscuits to ensure these are less likely to turn into hard, rock-like biscuits.